On the heels of its acquisition by Versace minority owner, the Blackstone Group, the Cosmopolitan Hotel is going up against Hearst Corporation and its magazine, Cosmopolitan. The Las Vegas-based hotel and casino, which Blackstone bought from Deutsche Bank earlier this month for $1.73 billion, has taken issue with a 2012 trademark registration in which Hearst is seeking to register "Cosmopolitan" in class 28, which includes "slot machines, lottery tickets and scratch cards for playing lottery games."

We are not exactly sure what they are up to over as Cosmo mag and why they would want to federally register their name in terms of slot machines, but as of May 12th (three days before the Blackstone acquisition was announced), Nevada Property 1 LLC (the body that owns the Cosmopolitan hotel's intellectual property) filed to prevent Hearst from registering the "Cosmopolitan" mark.

Nevada Property 1 holds a handful of federally registered "Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas" trademarks, including ones that extend to retail services, resort hotels, casinos, and clothing, but interestingly, it does not have one in class 28. This may not be all the surprising given the fact that the hotel and casino has been experience severe losses (think: $9.5 billion since 2012), and so, attention may be elsewhere.

And while the holding company has seemingly been cool with Hearst registering a large array of Cosmopolitan marks in the past, including ones that extend to jewelry, cds/cassettes containing music, bath linens, tote bags, watches, entertainment services, and websites, the one that aims to cover slot machines is apparently hitting a bit too close to home. More to come ...